In her book, she wrote: “More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Romanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in heaven or hell.

“Every person killed by a nosferatu becomes likewise a vampire after death, and will continue to suck the blood of other innocent persons till the spirit has been exorcised by opening the grave of the suspected person, and either driving a stake through the corpse or in very obstinate cases of vampirism it is recommended to cut off the head, and replace it in the coffin with the mouth filled with garlic.”

A decade later in 1897, Stoker published Dracula, based on reading on the subject he had done in the previous seven years.

Four hundred miles away from Airdrie, the London Library has just discovered how Stoker researched his project.

Image caption Emily Gerard wrote The Land Beyond the Forest about her experiences in Transylvania

Stoker was a library member and they have found 25 books he used as reference material.

Many have notes in the margin in his own hand plus dog-earred pages for finding relevant passages.

According to the London Library’s Philip Spedding, Emily Gerard was one of Stoker’s main two sources.

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Image caption Bram Stoker owned a copy of Emily Gerard’s book

In fact, the Irish author’s main reference book “The Land Beyond the Forest” was one he actually owned rather than having to borrow from the library.

Mr Spedding says Stoker’s son gifted his father’s copy of Gerard’s book to the library in 1935.

It was on a list of books cited as sources for Stoker’s work.

The list led to a recent trawl of the library shelves.

According to Mr Spedding, the “hairs on the back of my neck” stood up when he found the very books Stoker had used in the library, complete with the exact markings he had made in his notes.